That Vulture In You
by Poetoffire
Summary: His razors are his eyes, the chair his arms, death his blood.  But she overflows with selfish, disgusting life, and it terrifies him that he wants her.  Until he gives in, and sees the two are not so different. A dark Sweenett manifesto.


So.

I'm writing oneshots based on random songs that come up on shuffle, but so far it's been a lot of stuff about the other characters and the ball. So I decided the next song that came up, I'd write a Sweenett fic. Messing around with more minor characters is fun, but I do ship it, so I decided: it's popular, I like how the fandom writes it only occasionally, so I'll give it my own go. Any song.

The Judge's "Johanna" from the Original Cast Album came up.

And if you know anything about the song, you'll know I couldn't write a fluffy scene between them and call it a day. So this came out.

Warning: Graphic violence, fade-to-black sex, and general themes that are very dark, even for Sweeney Todd. This is not a nice or happy fic. This is a fic about the kind of love between two people that leads to serial murder and cannibalism. It doesn't sound bad, but it is. Trust me on this one.

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**That Vulture In You**

Sweeney Todd is sure he can no longer be called a human anymore.

He is a hatred, an all-consuming hatred that rises in the back of men's throats like bile and bubbles out when he draws it, feeds him. He is a thing in a body made from loss, and every time he looks at his razors he sees new truths and feels each layer beneath his skin coil away, stick between his ribs and chafe against his muscles, rubbing him raw. His razors are his eyes, the chair his arms. Death is his blood.

Death is an old friend, and he remembers their meeting as if it were yesterday. A week after arriving in Botany Bay, he watched a man spasm against the rocks, bits of organs swimming in the mass of red that had been his stomach. Benjamin Barker used the rhythmic knocking of his head and hands to chop wood. But as the hissing sounds escaping his mouth subsided, Barker turned away, plugged his ears.

He did not recognize the artistry there, but with every man who curled up beside him and cried until all the water left his body, every fool who dared to rise against the devils that entrapped them and found his head posted at the top of the camp the next morning, it seemed more designed.

A prisoner in his work group, nicknamed Gull for his sharp eyes and hands turned away from each other, who didn't walk places but seeped into them, was a friend. He, too, remained innocent of the murders ascribed to him and longed to earn his reputation if he escaped.

Gull was German, and his soft voice on all those hard sounds as he prayed each night in his native tongue lulled Barker to sleep. "I ought to call you Todd," he said, as they watched yet another man struggle to rise. "There are things you see, when every person ignores the dying. You look…taken. Like dying is a woman."

Barker laughed, and his mouth filled with the bitter taste of vomit as he watched the bloody face of the man sink and rise, lower and lower each time. "It's a craft, I think. A master. There is nothing but brutality here—here is the only worksman. Of course I watch."

One morning Gull woke and his hands were everywhere, picking at his clothes and the dirt in the walls.

There was a man in their group who pissed blood and scratched the gray-tinged bumps slowly eating up his skin. Gull walked up to him, pushed him to the ground, and shoved his fingers in the man's mouth, smacking him hard and coating his hands with spittle and snot. Then he got off him, wiped his diseased hands all over his face and eyes.

His hands no longer fluttered and sailed through the air after that, dead before the rest of him.

"Why did you do it?" Barker asked, holding Gull down later as the man grunted and shook. He was sure he'd be sick too, but Gull had been his only friend and it was his duty to help him in his last days.

Gull laughed, hard.

By the time Gull's corpse was carted away, Barker no longer answered to anything but Todd.

Death brought him to this edge, and death will take him away. He dreams only of death or the dead. Lucy dances in the whites of the Judge's eyes, and then Sweeney Todd makes love with her in a coffin, together at last, cold in each other.

Then one night his dreams are different. He awakes sweaty and more frightened than since he can remember, rushes to the vanity to see Lucy again, but she's looking beyond him and it doesn't change his dream. Doesn't stop the thoughts or bring him back to reality.

Because Mrs. Lovett is life—overflowing with selfish, disgusting life—and he cannot let himself get caught up in that again.

He'll never understand why she attaches herself to him, tries to coax him into a word, a smile. They live in two different realms, hundreds of miles away from each other, but he knows she wouldn't touch his shoulders, his neck, his hair, wouldn't pull him close to her if she wasn't sure of how neatly it broached the distance.

And oh, how he wants her. How he lies alone in bed, shame battering him in waves, clutching every memory of Lucy close to him, despite how few there are left.

Sweeney Todd is not human anymore, and there is no better proof of that than the way he gleans his happiness from murder, from watching the people of London lick their lips and dig into each other like the dogs they are. Yet Mrs. Lovett is there, presiding over the decay.

It has been so long since he had something to believe in, and it's just his luck he must believe in their plan, and consequently believe in her.

This and a good amount of gin is how he finds himself led to her room by her little hands. She giggles and grabs his shirt, and he touches her mouth, warm and chapped. She bites at his fingers. He shoves her to the bed and crawls over her, needing something more than what any other old friend can give him.

He thought it would go against every wall he's built up, but only when she moans his name, Todd, Todd, does he understand fully and finally. It is not blasphemous.

There is a marriage between death and sex. The drive to create is still as ravenous in him as that to destroy.

He is unbearably human, because all humans feel what he feels, but all humans let society beat it out of them. They are the only two left, creating colors in this cavity of filth, unfettered by decency or reason. One sin exists, its name is cowardice, and when he entered her room it evacuated the premises.

When she pushes his hair out of his face he swears it's the touch of god.

There is a thing between them, conceived dancing across a pie shop, now baptized in their sweat. He will let it into his life, he will raise it, and when the time comes and the Judge is dead, she will still be his. His, always. Their hatechild will be the only thing he leaves behind when he has his own beautiful moment, and the plan laid out for him falls into place.

In that moment, she will fall too. He knows, and it makes him love her.


End file.
